According to a report by Forbes, the partnership between Visa and Circle Internet Financial (“Circle”), which developed dollar-backed stablecoin USDC Coin (USDC), means that from today Circle will help Visa card issuers to enable sending/receiving USDC payments.
The Forbes report says that “businesses will eventually be able to send international USDC payments to any business supported by Visa, and after those funds are converted to the national currency, spend them anywhere that accepts Visa.”
Once Circle has gone through Visa’s Fast Track program (sometime next year), Visa will create a card that allows any businesses to send/receive USDC to/from other businesses via the card. After the USDC funds are converted to the local currency, businesses can spend the money anywhere that takes Visa.
Visa’s Head of Crypto Cuy Sheffield had this to say:
“This will be the first, corporate card that will allow businesses to be able to spend a balance of USDC. And so we think that this will significantly increase the utility that USDC can have for Circle’s business clients”
Sheffield went on to say:
“We continue to think of Visa as a network of networks. Blockchain networks and stable coins, like USDC are just additional networks. So we think that there’s a significant value that Visa can provide to our clients, enabling them to access them and enabling them to spend at our merchants.”
Just before this article was published, Sheffield sent out the following tweet:
Visa’s Fast Track program, which was announced on May 7, “allows both new and established businesses to leverage the speed, security, reliability and scale of the Visa network to get up and running quickly, taking the process from months to weeks.” It “provides turnkey access to Visa’s ecosystem partners, online licensing, APIs, as well as extensive go-to-market toolkits, online education and expert advice to help Fintechs scale their business.”
At the risk of stating the obvious, today’s announcement is great for Visa, Circle, stablecoins (and Ethereum, which powers many of them), and the crypto space in general.
Featured Image by “multifacetedgirl” via Pixabay.com
The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.
